FREEDOM SQUARE AND BASTEJKALNS PARK
Freedom Monument, National Opera, Embassies, Vermanes Garden, Orthodox Cathedral
This page is about the area around Freedom Square, just North of the Old Town. Here you can find the imposing Freedom Monument, the beautiful narrow Bastejkalns Park, the National Opera, the parks Vermanes Garden and Esplanade, the beautiful Russian-Orthodox Cathedral as well as many embassies. There are more modern buildings here then in the Old Town, it is more trafficated by trams and the streets are larger.
FREEDOM SQUARE:
Freedom Square with the Freedom Monument (Brīvības piemineklis) and the Radisson Blu Latvjia Hotel. The Freedom Monument was built to honour the soldiers killed during the Latvian War of Independence (1918-20). It was unveiled in 1935 and is 41m tall. During the Soviet rule there were plans to demolish it, but was stopped.
The Freedom Monument consists of a travertine column bearing the copper figure of Liberty lifting three gilded stars.
Radisson Blu Latvjia Hotel is the 5th tallest skyscraper in Riga. It is 95m tall and has 27 floors. It was built in 1976 in Soviet modernism style, but the exterior has been recladded in a more international, postmodern style with more glass in 2001.
The French Embassy, a beautiful art nouveau (jugend) building on Elizabetes iela near Freedom Square.
The German Embassy
Elizabetes iela, East part and an older trolley bus.